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Pumpkin glut

Hundreds of pumpkins from Chiswick House Kitchen Garden and National Trust at Osterley were saved from the ignominy of the compost heap. Several of the best Chiswick restaurants added them onto their menus. We tried to share them with other top food glut organizations, such as Feeding the 5,000 (“we have gleaned 5,000 pumpkins ourselves”), Community Food Enterprise (“we already have over 4 tons of pumpkins, would you like some of them?”), Foodcycle (“we already have as many as we can use”).

We rang and emailed foodbanks and soup kitchens. The foodbanks said they can only give out non-fresh food (even though pumpkins keep for several weeks if not longer). The soup kitchens said they couldn’t deal with processing the pumpkins – all that peeling and chopping. We were a bit depressed at those responses, although the soup kitchen assured us that they did believe that the homeless need fresh veg. Yup…

Anyhow, we shifted the lot – all week people trotted up to the collection point, scooped up a pumpkin or two, and everyone was happy. Especially us as we grabbed the last one for our pumpkin soup, and our pumpkin mountain was cleared.

TURNHAM GREEN BRIDGE MURAL

Abundance is a project to harvest the seasonal glut of local fruit (apples, pears, plums, quinces, cherries, grapes...). Each year hundreds of fruit trees go unpicked. Abundance is a team of volunteers who have been harvesting city fruit, distributing it, making jams & preserves, or selling the surplus to local restaurants and shops on a non-profit basis, ie. the money goes back into the project or to local charitable organisations.